**4. Conclusions**

The identified benefits of urban horticulture include food security, employment and income generation for producing households as well as individuals employed to work on the urban farms. It also reduces the cost of transportation and easy access of healthy food to the teeming urban population.

In order to realize the benefits of urban horticulture in the sub-Saharan African region, it is imperative that governments in the different countries have the political will to actualize the identified benefits. This can be achieved by sensitizing them on the benefits of urban horticulture and integrating this concept into urban land use planning while ensuring environmental sustainability.

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**Author details**

Ifeoluwapo Amao

National Horticultural Research Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

\*Address all correspondence to: ifeluv@yahoo.com

provided the original work is properly cited.

*Urban Horticulture in Sub-Saharan Africa DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90722*

## **Conflict of interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

*Urban Horticulture in Sub-Saharan Africa DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90722*

*Urban Horticulture - Necessity of the Future*

literate and some employed other people to assist in their production activities. The main reasons they were engaged in the activity was availability of water and profit being realized. Farmers experienced constraints such as inadequate access to credit as well as safe and cheap irrigation facilities, limited access to land, threat from pest and diseases, and marketing of produce. Moreover, findings showed that no comprehensive plan existed for urban agriculture; the issue was partially mentioned in the bye law of Accra Metro Assembly of 1995. This supported backyard farming and was promulgated with the major aim of maintaining sanitary conditions in the metro assembly and not to promote urban agriculture. The study recommended that good physical planning should not regard agricultural lands as residential lands or those for commercial uses. Also, integrating urban agriculture into city development would require including urban and peri-urban agriculture in zoning plans, construction of urban territorial way, among others. In addition, policy makers should ensure that the needs and benefits of urban agriculture (land tenure, drain-

age and water availability) should be considered in physical planning.

need to integrate urban agriculture into urban land use planning [26, 30].

of healthy food to the teeming urban population.

planning while ensuring environmental sustainability.

The author declares no conflict of interest.

The identified benefits of urban horticulture include food security, employment and income generation for producing households as well as individuals employed to work on the urban farms. It also reduces the cost of transportation and easy access

In order to realize the benefits of urban horticulture in the sub-Saharan African region, it is imperative that governments in the different countries have the political will to actualize the identified benefits. This can be achieved by sensitizing them on the benefits of urban horticulture and integrating this concept into urban land use

In addition, the socio-spatial dynamics of household food and nutrition security was assessed by examining vegetable production, consumption and its contribution to diets of households [34]. This was carried out to assess the role of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Tamale, Ghana. The results revealed that okra, pepper and roselle were the most commonly produced vegetables in the study area cultivated mainly for household consumption. A greater proportion of the households produced staple crops compared to vegetables. The results also showed a low consumption of dark green leafy vegetables and limited diversity of vegetables, especially vitamin A rich vegetables and tubers. Urban households had highest dietary diversity and dark green leafy vegetable consumption. This finding could be due to their accessibility to fruit and vegetable markets as well as other food suppliers. However, limited diversity of vegetables consumed was noted in the rural areas. Lastly, Mugalavai et al. [15] concluded that in Eldoret, Kenya, increasing farming in cities was important to meet employment and food needs, especially for the poor urban population. From the findings of Mkwambisi et al. [27], they opined that urban agriculture should be recognized on the political agenda. This was because it was the second most important source of income for households in Blantyre and Lilongwe, Malawi. The need for investment and support for urban agriculture in terms of extension services, credit access, and so on was observed [28]. The study also observed the

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**4. Conclusions**

**Conflict of interest**
